


A Twenty Year Journey

by KazOfScotland



Series: Daydream Believer [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, POV Neville Longbottom, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Canon, Post-Hogwarts, Pre-Battle of Hogwarts, Pre-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25577044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KazOfScotland/pseuds/KazOfScotland
Summary: Neville's metamorphosis from an eight year old suspect Squib to a twenty eight year old father and Professor at Hogwarts. Neville's thoughts on each of the key points in his life when he changed and grew.
Relationships: mentioned Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood
Series: Daydream Believer [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853704
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9
Collections: Harry & Neville's Birthday Celebration





	A Twenty Year Journey

**Author's Note:**

> A massive thank you to ... for beta'ing this.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/188770186@N05/50163941681/in/dateposted-public/)

By the age of eight, the Longbottom family had begun to believe that Neville was a squip, he couldn’t do magic. It seemed as if he didn’t have a magical bone in his body. His uncle eventually tired of it, and tested him to see if he was a squip, and by a miracle he wasn’t. However, that didn’t mean that Neville was suddenly able to do magic like he was meant to be according to his uncle. 

His grandmother, Augusta, never pushed him to try and use his magical abilities. She just let him be, she let him potter around in the garden, tending to plants and learning everything that he could about herbology. She knew that a lot of people looked at her with pity and shame. Afterall she was raising her grandson, and he didn’t show a single ounce of magical talent. Regardless, she loved him, and she supported him to do his best. 

At the age of eleven, everyone was shocked when Neville, the forgetful kid, who still hadn’t performed a single spell correctly, got his letter to Hogwarts. His family, with the exception of his Grandmother, had thought it was a mistake. They all thought that he would arrive at Hogwarts and be returned home within a week. Despite passing the test and showing that he wasn’t a squib when he was eight, everyone thought that it was a false result, and he would never be able to complete a single lesson. 

It was an even bigger surprise to everyone, including Augusta, when he was placed in Gryffindor. Everyone had thought that with him being so uncomfortable, so incapable of casting the simplest of spells, if he, by some form of miracle, managed to stay at Hogwarts he would end up in Hufflepuff. He was kind hearted, he was far kinder than brave, that was what he was told for his whole childhood. 

At the age of fifteen, Neville faced the one person who he feared the most, the person who scared him more than Snape and his family. He had to face Bellatrix Lestrange, the Death Eater who took his parents from him, and he survived. By this point, he had learned that the only people who really had faith in his magical abilities were his friends. He had fought and fought to defend the people he cared about, and it was the first time that he had actually felt confident in his magical abilities. 

And then. Then he broke his father's wand. It was like a switch was flipped. He didn’t feel trapped and unable to do what he needed to. He felt free and in control. It was also the moment that he realised just how much he hated himself for it. His Grandmother had given him his dad's wand so that he would feel as though he was honouring him, but instead it had just made him feel trapped. 

But a few weeks later, once he was home and they had gone to Olivanders where he got his own wand, he felt able to do everything that he had been told he couldn’t do. He could cast spells and they didn’t go awry as they had been for the first fifteen years of his life. 

At the age of seventeen, Neville took over defending his school and his friends. Somehow in the less than two years since the battle with the Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries, he had started to live up to the stereotypical belief of what a Gryffindor should be. He snuck out of the castle through the tunnels to ensure that his fellow students had something to eat. He wouldn’t let anyone do anything that he wasn’t willing to do. 

He fought in the final battle of the war against Voldemort, he stood up and spoke the truth, he stood up for his people against the worst Wizard their world had ever seen. When he thought back to his childhood, he never would have imagined that he would be able to do this. He never thought that he would be the sort of wizard, the sort of man, who would stand up for what he believed to be right. 

After the war, at the age of twenty, Neville realised that he had to grow up. Whilst in a way he had metamorphosed from a suspected Squib to a Wizard who successfully trained to an Auror, he had never actually grown up as a person. He had also decided that he was going to have one night of just fun; he and Luna had decided that the best way to deal with the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts was with a lot of Firewhisky. Neither expected the aftermath of that night to mean that they would have to grow up from being twenty to be parents in the space of nine months. 

At the age of twenty eight, Neville had finally grown up into the adult he wanted to be. He had left the Auror’s office, and instead he had decided that he still loved Herbology more than anything else. He had also come to the realisation that as a Professor at Hogwarts he would get to see his daughter grow up, and that this was his final stage of metamorphosis. 

It wasn’t until the night before he left for the start of term at Hogwarts that he realised just how much he had changed in the last twenty years. From a child who was thought to be Squib to a Hogwarts student who defended his fellow students and finally to a father and a professor. It had been a journey, there had been ups and downs, but he made it to where he was meant to be. 


End file.
